Ivy Compton-Burnett: Parents and Children

Luce gave a series of slow, little laughs, keeping her eyes from her mother.

‘Their grandfather wants what is best for them,’ said Regan.

‘Graham, Grandma has dropped her handkerchief,’ said Luce, without a break in her tone, and hardly changing the direction of her eyes. ‘Are we to expect Grandpa to take the same attitude towards the other boys?’

‘The younger ones often remain the younger ones,’ said Eleanor.

‘That sounds a cryptic remark, my dear,’ said Fulbert, ‘but I recognize the truth it contains.’

‘Are not the schoolroom children coming down today?’ said Luce.

‘I have just sent word that they need not come,’ said Eleanor. ‘Missing their grandfather would only lead to questions.’

‘Their yoke is easy and their burden light,’ said Graham.

‘Mother, I will try again with Graham,’ said Daniel. ‘It cannot be that I shall always speak in vain.’

‘It is a fact that you do so at the moment, my boy,’ said Fulbert, in mingled enjoyment and apprehension.

‘Mother dear, relax,’ said Luce. ‘It is not good for you to remain in that wrought-up state.’

‘Come, come, my dear, things are not so bad,’ said Fulbert.

‘I cannot bear the ignorant quoting of sacred words.’

‘We see that you can’t, and so the lads will remember it.’

‘That should not be their reason for avoiding it.’

‘It should be one of them. And they know the others.’

‘Father, is Grandpa by himself?’ said Luce.

‘I daresay he is. Indeed he must be.’

‘Don’t you want to go to him, Father?’ said Luce, looking at Fulbert with mild amusement.

‘I have never heard that the sins of the children should be visited upon the fathers. But I can’t leave the old man to simmer on the hob, when he is in danger of boiling over.’

‘Grandpa is not a kettle, Father,’ said Luce, in a quiet tone.

Regan laughed, and Fulbert ran round the table and gave her a kiss, and then did the same to his wife and daughter, and seemed about to run from the room, but did not do so.

‘I wonder if we shall realize that Grandpa is human, before — while we are all young about him,’ said Luce.

‘Before he becomes more than human,’ said Graham.

‘Yes, before that, boys,’ said Luce, in an unflinching tone.

‘It will be wasted when Grandpa understands all,’ said Graham.

Regan rose and rustled from the room in some personal preoccupation. Eleanor dropped her eyes and remained still. Fulbert’s eyes flashed with rallying apprehension round the table. The silence held until it reached the stage at which it is impossible to break.

‘Graham, I do not remember that I forbade you to speak,’ said Daniel.

Graham emitted a sound.

‘Cry, Graham, if you must. We shall understand.’

Luce made an involuntary sound that served as a signal, and the brothers and sister rocked in mirth, or in some emotion that bore the semblance of it.

Eleanor had her own reaction to such proceedings. She rose and appeared to engage herself with a bowl of flowers.

‘You boys can go and sit with your grandfather,’ she said, inserting a hand to gauge the depth of the water. ‘I want your father to myself for a time.’

‘Mother, do not hold yourself aloof,’ said Luce, in a voice that had not quite regained its steadiness. ‘Magnifying a matter is not the way to mend it.’

‘That sort of laughter is very easy to catch,’ said Eleanor, in a condoning manner that did her credit, considering that she had hardly found this the case herself. ‘But your father and I will be left to ourselves. We have many things to discuss.’

‘Well, let us begin on them, my dear,’ said Fulbert leaning back in his chair.

Eleanor was silent for a moment.

‘It is strange that we can get so vexed with people who are so much to us.’

‘Not at all, when they give us cause. It was a good move to send the young jackanapes to their grandfather.’

‘Do you think it was a mean thing to do, that I was retaliating on them?’

‘No doubt you were, my dear. And it was the right thing. Why shouldn’t they learn that they get as good as they give?’

‘They ought not to learn it from their mother.’

‘They are happy to have from anyone what is best for them. And that is what a dose of the old man will be. I hope they are not queering their pitch with him.’

This question was answered by the opening of the library door and the sound of Sir Jesse’s voice.

‘So I am held to be short of company. If you are engaged with your wife, I will have my own. I prefer a woman to half a man. I have sent the pair about their business, and I hope they will follow it.’

‘I will fetch Grandma for you, Grandpa,’ said Luce, coming forward. ‘Father thought it would be good for the boys to talk to you.’

‘So I shoulder the responsibility,’ said Fulbert, with an amused air.

‘I daresay,’ said Sir Jesse to his granddaughter, without a hint of disputing the idea. ‘But where is the benefit for me? I get my share of them.’

‘It is not the boys’ fault that they are not quite up to you, Grandpa.’

‘Nor mine either, as I see it. And I put it to their account that they are so far behind. We are all of us human or should be. In their case I begin to have doubt. Grinning and chattering like apes and costing like dukes!’

‘I wish you could forget how much they cost you, Grandpa,’ said Luce, fingering Sir Jesse’s coat.

‘I wish the same, but I get too many reminders. Other people seem to bear it in mind.’

‘It will not be for much longer, Grandpa. They are both in their last year at Cambridge.’

‘And where will they spend the next ones? Behind bars, I should think. I hope that will be less expensive.’

‘I should think it would be, Grandpa,’ said Luce, in a demure tone, making a little grimace and curtsy for the eyes of her brothers.

‘If we are fed by the public through a grating,’ said Daniel, ‘it will take our keep off Grandpa.’

‘We should still carry our debt to the grave,’ said his brother. ‘Or to Grandpa’s grave we should.’

‘Why does he mind supporting us, so much more than the others? I suppose because we are adult and male. None of the others is both.’

‘It seems odd that I should be both,’ said Graham. ‘Neither seems suited to me.’

‘It is true of Grandpa and Father. And they have never earned a penny. We belong to the new generation that has to gain its bread.’

‘It is a poor position not to be entitled just to that,’ said Graham, with a faint smile. ‘Think what Grandpa is entitled to!’

‘I do not envy him,’ said Daniel.

‘You mean he is old and you are young,’ said Graham, looking into his brother’s face. ‘You think he will soon die. But he sees his death as too far distant to count. So that takes away your advantage.’

‘He can’t think he is a god.’

‘We have done what we can to foster the belief. And I have almost come to accept it.’

‘He insists that we shall do so,’ said Daniel.

‘That is the way to make himself into one. And I feel he has succeeded.’

‘He thinks that youth is a time for mischief and the concealment of it,’ said Daniel. ‘I expect he remembers that it is. And he knows that mischief costs money.’

‘I have heard him observe that everything does that,’ said Graham.

‘The inheritance must vanish with so much division,’ said Daniel. ‘Father is the last to anticipate it. I am a poor sort of eldest son. Grandpa rightly despises me.’

‘Father says he will not see the time when it is gone,’ said Graham, smiling. ‘By claiming extinction for himself, he puts any experience of life in a favourable light.’